S.A. sees fewer foreign migrants

Numbers are down 50% from decade ago.

By Joe Yerardi :
April 6, 2013
: Updated: April 8, 2013 5:53pm

Local historian Rudi R. Rodriguez, the founder of TexasTejano.com, with a photo in his office taken in 1914 of one of his ancestors, Jose Policarpio “Polly” Rodriguez with family and friends at a home Polly had constructed near Bandera in 1858.

Photo By San Antonio Express-News graphic

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Photo By Mike Fisher

Proportionally, San Antonio has both the largest Hispanic population and the largest native-born Hispanic population of any metro area of at least a million residents in the state.

Photo By Marvin Pfeiffer/San Antonio Express-News

Rudi R. Rodriguez, avid Tejano historian and the founder and president of TexasTejano.com, stands with a photo in his office taken in 1914 of one of his ancestors, Jose Policarpio "Polly" Rodriguez (in center of photo), with family and friends at a home Polly constructed near Bandera in 1858. Photo taken Wednesday, April 3, 2013. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net

Photo By Marvin Pfeiffer/San Antonio Express-News

Rudi R. Rodriguez, avid Tejano historian and the founder and president of TexasTejano.com, stands with a photo in his office taken in 1914 of one of his ancestors, Jose Policarpio "Polly" Rodriguez with family and friends at a home Polly constructed near Bandera in 1858 and a saddle from Atascosa County once owned by Polly's oldest brother, Jose Justo Rodriguez, in the 1880's to 1890's. Photo taken Wednesday, April 3, 2013. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net

Photo By Marvin Pfeiffer/San Antonio Express-News

A photo in Rudi R. Rodriguez's office taken in 1914 of one of his ancestors, Jose Policarpio "Polly" Rodriguez (left), with his family and friends at a home called "The Fort" that Polly constructed in 1858 near Bandera. Polly was 85 years old when the photo was taken and passed away shortly after the photo was taken from pneumonia. Over the years Polly was an early Texas gunsmith, a frontiersman, a surveyor, a scout guide and interpreter for the 2nd U.S. Cavalry, a Texas Ranger, a County Commissioner and Justice of the Peace in Bandera County and finally a Methodist minister. Photo taken Wednesday, April 3, 2013. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net

Photo By Marvin Pfeiffer/San Antonio Express-News

A saddle from the late 1800's in Rudi R. Rodriguez's office from Atascosa County once owned by an ancestor, Jose Justo Rodriguez, on Wednesday, April 3, 2013. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net

With her husband, a naturalized American citizen, serving as her sponsor, Mexican school Principal Gabriela Verdin Gonzalez moved to San Antonio last year.

In doing so, the Tampico native became a member of a rather exclusive club: recent international immigrants to the city.

From April 1, 2010, through July 1, 2012, the San Antonio area added a mere 8,021 new residents from foreign countries, according to Census Bureau estimates released last month.

The number represented a decline of more than 50 percent over the same period of time a decade earlier, when the metro area's population was less than three-quarters its current size. Its relative share of the region's growth was dwarfed by both domestic migration and natural increase. And the influx was less than that of any other Texas metro with at least a million residents.

The drop in immigration was particularly stark, given the region's robust overall growth rate of 4.3 percent — 95,000 new residents — in that period.

The reasons for San Antonio's recent paucity of new, non-American residents are varied. Some are new while others are historical. Some are based in economic trends and others in cultural norms.

Part of the reason can be found in San Antonio's unique demographic profile.

Rudi R. Rodriguez, a local historian and the founder of TexasTejano.com, can trace his family's presence in San Antonio to the 19th century. One of his relatives fought on the side of Texas revolutionaries at the 1835 Battle of Bexar, later receiving a land grant from Gov. Sam Houston.

“Tejanos are part of the fabric of the American Southwest. We were the founders of the American Southwest,” said Rodriguez, whose website seeks to educate people about the role Tejanos — the descendants of Spanish settlers — have played in Texas history.

And in few places is Rodriguez's assertion truer than in San Antonio.

Today, the San Antonio metro area — encompassing Bexar, Atascosa, Bandera, Comal, Guadalupe, Kendall, Medina and Wilson counties — has a higher proportion of native-born Hispanics — almost 84 percent — than any other metro in the state with at least 1 million residents.

And since so much of San Antonio's Hispanic population was born in the U.S., the community's bonds with Mexico, common in other large Texas cities, are thinner here, experts say.

“A lot of the Latinos living in San Antonio no longer have friends and families living in Mexico,” said Spener, who has taught at universities in Mexico and Chile.

At the same time, Hispanics are the area's largest ethnic group, accounting for some 54 percent of the population — far more than similarly sized Texas metros.

That combination can have a profound effect on transnational immigration.

Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of RAICES, a San Antonio-based nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrant and refugee families, said other Texas cities have many recent, well-established immigrant communities that serve as magnets for new immigrants.

“Take the Burmese. They're going to Dallas. Houston seems to really attract a lot of Central Americans and South Asians,” Ryan said.

Almost 18 percent of the residents of the Dallas metro area are foreign-born. In the Houston area, that number is 22 percent. Less than 12 percent of the San Antonio metro area's 2.2 million residents were born outside the U.S.

“Immigration is a pattern that's driven by social networks,” Spener said. “Immigrants are drawn to places where they have friends and families already living.”

Moving for love

That's what brought Gonzalez to San Antonio.

“I came here for love,” she said through an interpreter at the offices of her immigration lawyer, Lance Curtright. “That's my only motive.”

Gonzalez, a principal and former teacher at a kindergarten in Tampico, Mexico, knew the man who would become her husband in middle school. Her husband came to the United States 15 years ago.

They reconnected six years ago through a mutual friend and married in 2010.

Throughout their relationship, Gonzalez would frequently visit her husband in San Antonio on a tourist visa. But their cross-border romance has not been without difficulties.

In November 2010, Border Patrol agents detained her for questioning near Reynosa, suspicious of the San Antonio area code on her mobile phone and records showing her frequent trips between Tampico, a hot spot in Mexico's drug war, and San Antonio.

The incident spurred Gonzalez's husband to sponsor her for a green card, which she recently received.

On extended leave from her principal's job in Tampico, she's currently residing with her husband in Northeast San Antonio, studying English.

Though happy to spend time with her husband, she says that she often misses her job and friends in Mexico.

“Like every other Mexican (immigrant), I pretty much have to deal with it,” she said of her homesickness.

Worth the cost?

If demographics can explain why San Antonio has historically been a weaker landing spot for foreign migrants, economics could be exacerbating the trend.

While international migration to San Antonio was down by more than half early in this decade, domestic migration was up almost 90 percent.

Part of the reason could be that while regional economies continue to struggle in much of the United States, Mexico — a major source of immigration to the U.S. — is seeing an economic upswing.

“The economy in many of the traditional migrant-sending regions of Mexico is really picking up,” Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter said.

Steve Nivin, chief economist with San Antonio's SABÉR Institute, built on that logic, noting it's a lot easier to move across state borders than it is national ones.

“The opportunity cost is lower moving from Detroit to San Antonio as opposed to moving from another country into San Antonio or Texas,” Nivin said. “Why make such a big transition if the opportunities might not be there?”

“San Antonio disproportionately has industries that don't employ (foreign) immigrants,” said Orrenius, who studies Mexico-U.S. immigration and the economies of the border region.

She pointed to San Antonio's large military and public sectors as industries that aren't traditional magnets for foreign job-seekers. Even the region's booming oil industry, Orrenius explained, is not one that tends to “pull directly from the international pool.”

At the same time, some immigrant-friendly industries in San Antonio, such as home construction, were hit particularly hard in the recent recession.

And Orrenius noted the methodology the Census Bureau uses also could be understating the magnitude of international migration. Because the Census Bureau classifies immigrants based on where they were living one year prior, foreigners who migrate to other parts of the United States and stay for more than a year before moving to San Antonio would be counted as domestic — not international — migrants.

Making opportunity

Georgina Tello probably couldn't have picked a worse time to open her first store in the United States.

It was 2007, with the nation's economy about to enter a recession, when Tello, co-owner with her husband of a chain of 48 stores in Mexico, opened Beading2Go in the Bandera Heights Shopping Center. In addition to selling bead-based jewelry to customers, the stores offer free beading lessons for people who want to start their own businesses and sell the raw materials to them.

“The first part of 2008 was very difficult,” Tello said. “I didn't know it was going to be so bad.”

But the business succeeded and now counts two additional San Antonio-area stores.

For Tello, moving her family to San Antonio was a no-brainer.

“It's very difficult to hire someone who can make good decisions for the business when you're not in that country,” said Tello, who knew of fellow Mexican business owners who'd delegated responsibility for their U.S. operations to others and had come to regret the decision.

And so her family made San Antonio their home.

Tello says that despite the weak economic recovery, San Antonio — with its large Hispanic population — is an ideal entry point for Mexican business owners looking to expand into the American market.

“You can polish your product and company here in San Antonio and then launch into the United States,” said Tello, who plans to open stores in Austin, Houston and Dallas.

With 20 years of experience, Gonzalez, the Tampico principal, needs only five more years to retire with a pension, so she intends to return to Tampico and finish her career before eventually permanently settling in San Antonio with her husband, teaching in local schools.

“I was one of those people who said, 'I would never go live in the United States,' and now look at me,” Gonzalez said, laughing.